A co-production with the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Berliner Festspiele, Festspielhaus St. Pölten, La Filature de Mulhouse & Ensemble Modern with generous support from the Deutsche Bank Foundation and the Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
Commissioned by the European Festival Union.
The 2010 edition was made possible by generous support from the Aventis Foundation.

About the work

The title is reminiscent of a painting by an old master like Nicolas Poussin in which all elements are equally important and things in the distance are never out of focus. The beholder can choose their own way of looking at it. Heiner Goebbels developed this principle further in Landscape with Distant Relations - no story line as such, a kaleidoscope of constantly changing pictures in which members of the Ensemble Modern, as performers and musicians, form constantly changing constellations of people from different cultures and epochs: an insistant drummer group, rococo society, dancing dervishes or cowboys, like – the composer’s own words – a musical-literary tour through a museum. The libretto consists of texts, narratives, discourses and peoms by Gertrude Stein, Giordano Bruno, Henri Michaux, T. S. Eliot, François Fénelon, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Foucault and Nicolas Poussin.
First performed in 2002 it has undergone further development with every performance, the most recent a version titled Bildbeschreibungen/Description of a Picture (released on CD by ECM in Munich 2007). The process continues. The result: a new »Frankfurt Edition«, with scenography by Klaus Grün¬berg and costumes by Florence von Gerkan.